While I’m also a card carrying bike but and plant-based eater, I think that in many places the answer is also better public transport. When I lived in a big city, busses, subway stations, trams, etc were always 5-10 minutes away, both walking and waiting for the next one.

I live in a smaller town now of ~40,000. However, only ~13,000 live in the actual “town”, roughly 20 minutes of walking. The rest of the people live anywhere from 10-60km away. Grocery stores can be anywhere from 10-30km away. Iove biking into work when the weather is nice, but it also snows six months out of the year. Even for a “small trip”, you’re looking at 20km round trip in hilly terrain to the nearest anything that isn’t a neighbor. Busses exist, but out in the countryside they’ll come twice around 6am and then twice around 6pm, and none at all during weekends. So if you’re not working in the middle of the week, you’re SOL unless you’re prepared to spend 12 hours in town.

It’s also a chicken and egg problem though, everyone has a cat because public transport isn’t great. But public transport isn’t great because there’s no demand, because everyone has a car.

This issue is definitely not only in my town, 70% of the country is dotted with small towns like this and the same issues. Not everyone is physically capable of biking 20km on a summers day, let alone in -20°C on a half meter of snow, so they have almost no choice but to drive.

What did you sub to on reddit? I’ve found a music-related instance with just a small handful of people, but I’m already enjoying the feel of it. I hope it turns into something slightly larger, but time will tell. I’d suggest looking for communities that are similar to your tastes and stick around for awhile. The party is early, and I think many are too shy to make a move to break the ice. The more active a community seems, the easier it is for newer people to start sharing as well.